When a contractor or customer desires to purchase materials for building, constructing or modifying a residential home, condominium, apartment or office complex, the contractor or customer must evaluate the construction phase and determine what materials or supplies will be necessary to accomplish the goal of completing the project. Generally, even the smallest construction project requires a significant number of materials and supplies and one of the first steps in any construction project is the procurement of such materials and supplies. Typically, the contractor or customer must personally go to the vendor's or merchant's store, locate the appropriate materials and physically load the materials on a cart or vehicle for purchasing. When navigating through the vendor's store to locate the necessary materials and supplies that are available for sale, the procurement process may be tedious because the materials usually are spread throughout the store. Due to the number of materials and supplies and the specific quantity of each, this inefficient procurement method forces the contractor or customer to spend many hours in locating, selecting and purchasing of such materials. Furthermore, since the particular stores are open usually during the daylight and evening hours, the contractor or customer cannot order materials or supplies at a more convenient time, such as late at night or early in the morning. In addition, the contractor or customer must not only purchase a variety of materials and supplies, but must also personally load them on an appropriate vehicle or make arrangements to have the materials delivered to the site of construction. Also when constructing an entire building, there are a number of phases, e.g. foundation, plumbing, framing, roofing, etc. Therefore, the general contractor or customer must perform this inefficient ordering and purchasing process a number of times.
With the advent of large hardware and lumber supply merchants or vendors, such as Home Depot, Homebase, or Eagle Hardware the smaller hardware and lumber stores have been diminishing in numbers. While the smaller hardware may offer more services to compete with large vendors and the less competition might not offer the contractors or customers the best prices, there are several advantages. One particular advantage of the large stores that relates to this invention, is a standardization of identification of supply materials. Home Depot, Home Base, or Eagle Hardware have a standardized list of all materials for sale by a specific name, SKU code, part number, universal product code, and/or bar code. This opens the opportunity for a more advanced and efficient means to order supply materials from large merchants for construction projects.